March 16 (Bloomberg) -- Queensland Premier Anna Bligh said
a reconstruction program after flooding and a cyclone ravaged
the state will cost A$6 billion ($6 billion) and take at least
two years to complete.

Rebuilding will create jobs and stimulate the economy of
Australia’s third-most populous region, Bligh, 50, said
yesterday in an interview at her Brisbane office. “It will have
a stimulatory effect on the economy,” Bligh said. “We are
already seeing substantial recovery in some areas.”

Six weeks after Cyclone Yasi struck a state already
inundated by floodwaters over an area as big as France and
Germany combined, some 86 percent of the road network has
reopened and 94 percent of mines are partly or fully operational,
she said. While flooding damaged crops and washed away 19,000
kilometers of roads, Yasi smashed homes and ripped through
banana and sugar crops. At least 36 people were killed.

“How long do I think before we see these communities and
local and state economies functioning at full capacity -- I
think we would probably need to say at least two years,” Bligh
said. “A$6 billion of rebuilding and reconstruction is a lot of
work.”

Queensland produces 80 percent of Australia’s coking coal
and represents almost one-fifth of the national economy. Support
for Bligh has risen in opinion polls because of her handling of
the disasters ahead of an election in the state due before June
2012. Her Labor party will vie for a record sixth term.

Public Plaudits

Bligh’s mastery of detail won her public plaudits as she
held press conferences every two hours late into the night
during the natural disasters, outlining weather warnings and
flood levels. The mother-of-two slept in evacuation centers and
traveled across the state as water and gales damaged almost
30,000 homes.

Born southwest of Brisbane in Warwick, Bligh is a
descendant of HMS Bounty Captain William Bligh, whose crew
mutinied in 1789 and who later was appointed governor of New
South Wales.

Bligh, who studied English literature and social science at
Queensland University, entered parliament in 1995.

She held several posts before becoming Queensland’s first
female education minister. In 2005, when the deputy premier
unexpectedly resigned, she replaced him and also was named
minister of finance and of state development and trade. Bligh
became premier in September 2007.

‘So Catastrophic’

Bligh yesterday reflected on the March 11 earthquake in
Japan that may have killed 10,000 people, shut down factories
and sparked the risk of a meltdown at a nuclear power plant.

“What’s coming out of Japan is of a scale that is so
catastrophic I couldn’t even pretend to get my own head around
it and offer advice,” Bligh said. “The one thing that we
learned very powerfully during our own experiences is just how
important information is and how critical that was to people’s
ability to prepare well.

“In Japan their government had no warning and no ability
to plan and prepare, it’s of a scale that is very daunting,”
she said. “The quiet resilience of the Japanese people is
already showing through and that will be the greatest resource
that country will be able to rely on.”

Bligh said events in Japan would set back the case for
developing nuclear power in Australia, which holds 40 percent of
the world’s uranium and supplies 19 percent of the global market
for the atomic fuel.

Uranium Ban

“Australians always have been very cautious about nuclear
power and I think they’re right to be -- one because of the
safety issues,” Bligh said. “This is a debate that has been
largely theoretical for some time and there isn’t any investor
out there wanting to offer nuclear power in an Australian
context simply because it is not cost effective.”

Bligh said she would not lift Queensland’s ban on uranium
mining.

In Australia, BHP Billiton Ltd.’s Olympic Dam, Energy
Resources of Australia Ltd.’s Ranger mine and the Four Mile
project, a venture between Alliance Resources Ltd. and Quasar
Resources, are seeking to tap increased demand for uranium as
countries turn to nuclear power to curb greenhouse emissions.